Displaying items by tag: plant

US: Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, has warned that Orcem Americas’ proposed slag cement plant in Vallejo breaks state environmental laws. In a letter to Vallejo's planning and development services co-ordinator he said that the project would violate the California Environmental Quality Act, according to the Irish Times newspaper. Becerra also raised issues with nitrogen oxide and CO₂ emissions. The intervention is an unusual move, as the state's attorney generals do not normally intervene in planning disputes.

Orcem Americas’ chief executive officer (CEO) Stephen Bryant said that a new environmental impact report would be prepared to address Becerra’s concernsd by the end of November 2018. The company, a subsidiary of Ireland’s Ecocem, is proposing to build and operate a US$50m slag grinding plant in Vallejo. However, the project has faced opposition from local environmental groups.

Bangladesh: Confidence Cement plans to install a slag dryer unit at its plant in Madambibirhat, Bhatiary near Chittagong. The upgrade is intended to allow for uninterrupted production at its Unit-2 and Unit-3 lines, according to the Financial Express newspaper. The company also intends to demolish its 600t/day Unit-1 line due to high electricity costs and overall running costs.Confidence Cement to install slag dryer unit

China: Lushan Conch has completed preparation for a project to use slag and fly ash. The subsidiary of Anhui Conch said that it has completed transport bidding work and had completed an underwriting process to support production usage. The plant is also making arrangements to use synthetic gypsum.

The company surpassed its target of 200,000t for production and sales of cement in September 2018 with 215,300t and 217,700t respectively. 105,800t of the total sales were sold as bulk cement.

UK: Harsco’s Metals & Minerals division has renewed a multi-year services contract with British Steel. The US-headquartered company will provide slag management, briquetting, slab handling, coke crushing and other services at the Scunthorpe steel plant. Harsco has provided onsite steel plant services to British Steel for over 30 years.

“Our team has been working very closely with British Steel since the acquisition of the Scunthorpe Steel Works in June 2016 to develop an innovative partnership that brings benefits to both parties,” said Russ Mitchell, Harsco Metals & Minerals chief operating officer.

India: The slag yard at the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant in Andhra Pradesh has collapsed. No injuries were reported during the incident, according to the Hindu newspaper. The cause of the accident remains unknown. The slag yard was built at the time of commissioning of the steel plant. An official said that production remained unaffected. Slag from the steel plant is supplied to cement and brick producers.

France: Eiffage, via its Eiffage Route subsidiary, and Phoenix Services have secured a new contract with ArcelorMittal, through SGA, their joint subsidiary for the removal and processing of by-products from the Dunkirk steelworks, the recovery of metal parts and the recycling of slag. This contract, worth an estimated Euro155m over 10 years, will come into effect on 1 December 2018.

The services to be provided entail collecting approximately 1Mt/yr of liquid slag, removing its iron content by a process already agreed in an earlier contract signed in 2004 and recycling it for embankments, agricultural uses and the manufacture of hydraulic binder marketed by Eiffage under the Sidmix brand. At least 75 personnel will be mobilised on a 24 hour per day basis to guarantee the removal of the slag from the steelmaking facility.

Italy: Cemitaly has been allowed to use slag and ash in cement production at its Taranto plant following an investigation, according to the Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper. The former Cementir unit was investigated in 2017 as part of an illegal waste probe that examined whether the Taranto plant purchased ‘illegal’ by-products from Enel and the ILVA steel plant to produce cement.

France: Ecocem France has inaugurated its 0.75Mt/yr slag cement grinding plant in Dunkirk. The unit, located near ArcelorMittal’s Dunkirk steel plant, started commercial production in May 2018. The site has plans to expand production to 1.4Mt/yr at a later date. It has created 26 jobs.

The plant is located in the Port of Dunkirk. It includes a vertical mill, a mixer and silos. The site is intended to target markets in northern France, the UK and Northern Europe. Plans to export 0.25Mt/yr of ground slag to the UK via terminals in London and Liverpool and 50,000t to Sweden have already started.

Ecocem France is a joint venture between Ireland’s Ecocem and ArcelorMittal. Ecocem invested Euro37m in the project in Dunkirk. It follows Ecocem France’s opening of its 0.7Mt/yr grinding plant at Fos-sur-Mer, also near to an ArcelorMittal plant

India: Engineering company Paul Wurth has released details on a new blast furnace it supplied for the Steel Authority of India’s (SAIL) Bhilai Steel Plant in Chhattisgarh. It supplied, with Larsen & Toubro, a 2.8Mt/yr blast furnace for the site that was commissioned in February 2018. The unit was the eighth furnace at the plant following seven mid-size furnaces of Soviet design built from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Slag processing equipment for the furnace included an Inba slag granulation unit with a cooling tower. Other general equipment supplied for the project included: copper and cast iron staves; a 2H Bell Less Top charging syste
m with pressure equalizing valves and bleeders; cardan-type tuyere stocks; a hot stoves plant of three internal combustion chamber stoves with waste gas heat recovery and process valves of Paul Wurth design; pulverized coal injection based on dense-phase conveying with three injection hoppers and 70t/hr capacity; a top gas cleaning plant with axial cyclone; annular gap scrubber and downstream energy recovery turbine. Paul Wurth also supplied its BFXpert Level 2 automation system to allow and control of the plant operation.

Paul Wurth noted that a particular challenge of the project was to fit the new blast furnace into a brownfield building site. In particular, the layouts of the main charging conveyor, the racks for utilities pipes and cables and the railway tracks had to be finalised with ‘unconventional’ solutions.

Blast Furnace 8 at Bhilai is the largest blast furnace put into operation by Paul Wurth in India so far. It has an inner volume of 4060m³, a hearth diameter of 13.4m, four tapholes and 36 tuyeres. The nominal production is 8030t/day of hot metal.

France: ArcelorMittal plans to increase its stake in Ecocem France to 49% from 30% by the end of May 2018. The transaction is subject to the approval of the Irish Competition Authority. The French subsidiary of Ireland’s Ecocem was set up in 2007 by ArcelorMittal and Ecocem Materials.

Ecocem produces slag cement from ground granulated blast furnace slag. Ecocem France operates a 0.7Mt/yr grinding plant at Fos-sur-Mer near to an ArcelorMittal plant. It plans to open a second 0.7Mt/yr grinding plant at Dunkirk in May 2018. The new plant is intended to target western and northern France as well as export markets in the UK and Belgium.